On May 14, President Biden announced a major escalation of the country’s emerging climate trade war with China, raising existing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to 100 percent — a unilateral quadrupling. A few days earlier, responding to reports of Biden’s plans, Donald Trump outdid him, promising tariffs of 200 percent should he win the 2024 election.

5月14日，拜登總統宣布將美中正在形成的氣候貿易戰大幅升級，把中國電動汽車的進口關稅提高到了100%，也就是單方面把目前的關稅翻了兩番。幾天前，在回應有關拜登相關計劃的報導時，川普不甘落後，承諾如果他贏得2024年的大選，他會徵收200%的關稅。

It’s not just E.V.s. Five years after blasting Trump for imposing tariffs on Chinese exports, Biden raised them — on aluminum, steel, lithium batteries, solar cells and semiconductors, among other products. Trade protections of this scope would have been almost unthinkable even half a generation ago, when free markets were largely seen by leaders of both parties as opportunities to exploit and tariffs were regarded as an expression of hostile desperation by weak, developingnations. And tariffs would have been perhaps even harder to imagine then in pursuit of global climate goals, which had always called to mind not zero-sum economic competition but virtuous visions of “Kumbaya” cooperation and even global governance in the name of Gaia.

提高關稅的不僅是電動汽車。五年前曾抨擊川普對中國進口產品徵收關稅的拜登，現在對鋁、鋼鐵、鋰電池、太陽能電池和半導體等產品都提高了關稅。哪怕在十幾年前，這種大範圍的貿易保護措施幾乎是不可想像的。那時，兩黨領導人在很大程度上都把自由市場視為可以利用的機會，將關稅視為弱小的發展中國家帶有敵意的絕望表現。對有利於實現全球氣候目標的產品徵收關稅，那時可能就更難想像了，實現這些目標讓人想起的不是零和經濟競爭，而是一團和氣展開合作的崇高願景，甚至是以蓋婭（希臘神話中創造萬物的大地女神，代指地球——譯註）之名的全球治理。

But since Trump’s election in 2016, chastened Democratic policymakers have come to see green industrial policy as a kind of one-size-fits-all, policy-and-politics tool — a recipe for addressing the climate crisis, yes, but also for the postindustrial “secular stagnation” of the U.S. economy, for the domestic manufacturing decline, for white working-class resentment and for the geopolitical challenge posed by China. Trade protectionism is now perhaps the closest thing we have to a bipartisan consensus in Washington, but sometimes all those goals sit at cross purposes. “There are few things that would decarbonize the U.S. faster than $20,000 E.V.s,” the M.I.T. economics professor David Autor recently said. “But there is probably nothing that would kill the U.S. auto industry faster, either.” And BYD, a Chinese automaker, just rolled out a model priced under $10,000.

但自從川普2016年當選總統以來，經歷挫敗後想有所改進的民主黨政策制定者們已開始將綠色產業政策視為一種通用的政策和政治工具，它不僅是解決氣候危機的辦法，也是解決美國經濟在後工業化時代「長期停滯」、國內製造業衰退、白人工人階級不滿，以及中國帶來的地緣政治挑戰等諸多問題的辦法。貿易保護主義現在可能是我們在華盛頓看到的最接近兩黨共識的東西，但所有這些目標有時是相互矛盾的。「幾乎沒有什麼東西比售價2萬美元的電動汽車能讓美國經濟更快地脫碳了，」麻省理工學院的經濟學教授戴維·奧托最近說。「但可能也沒有什麼東西能比它更快地扼殺美國汽車工業了。」中國汽車製造商比亞迪剛剛推出了一款售價低於1萬美元的車型。

Play a word-association game for “E.V.,” and an American is most likely to say “Tesla” first, but these days it would be better to say “China,” so astonishing has been the growth of the country’s electric-vehicle sector. In 2019, Chinese E.V. exports totaled $400 million; by 2023, they had reached $34 billion, a precipitous 85-fold increase and enough to help make the country, as recently as five years ago an afterthought in global auto exports, today the world’s top exporter of all cars. Nearly 60 percent of all the world’s E.V.s are now sold in China, which is home to three of the world’s four biggest E.V. manufacturers. In late 2023, BYD moved briefly into the top spot, shortly before Tesla issued a mass recall of its Cybertruck and reportedly canceled its plans for an affordable sedan.

如果玩與「電動汽車」有關的聯想詞遊戲，美國人最有可能首先想到「特斯拉」，但現在最好是想到「中國」，因為中國電動汽車行業的增長令人難以置信。2019年時，中國電動汽車的出口總額是4億美元；到2023年時，這一數字已達到340億美元，急劇增長了85倍，足以幫助中國成為當今世界上最大的汽車出口國，而就在五年前，中國向全球出口的汽車可以略而不計。現在，全球近60%的電動汽車銷售發生在中國，全球四大電動汽車製造商中有三家在中國。比亞迪曾在2023年底短暫成為全球最大的電動汽車製造商，不久後，特斯拉大規模召回了其Cybertruck，並據報導取消了生產一款經濟型轎車的計劃。

At present, there are hardly any Chinese-manufactured E.V.s even available for sale in the United States, which makes the back and forth over tariffs look pretty performative in the short term. (Symbolically, it has got to be reassuring to American autoworkers, a key swing-state constituency.) But cast your eyes a little deeper into the future, and E.V. protectionism looks less like a market tweak, designed to even the playing field for American automakers, than a market wall. It’s designed to keep Chinese exports entirely out of the United States, at least while the huge industrial stimulus of the Inflation Reduction Act kicks in, and to protect domestic manufacturers from the competition of cars that might be half as expensive or twice as appealing through years in which the country is meant to be transitioning rapidly. (E.V.s are supposed to be half of all new car sales by 2030, according to the White House, up from 7.6 percent last year.)

目前，幾乎沒有任何中國製造的電動汽車在美國銷售，這使得關稅問題在短期內看起來更像是表演。（從象徵意義上看，它顯然是為了讓美國汽車工人們放心，因為他們是搖擺州的關鍵選民。）但如果把目光放得更長遠一點，電動汽車保護主義看起來不像是為美國汽車製造商提供公平競爭環境而設計的市場調整，它更像是一堵大牆，目的是讓中國的電動汽車出口完全無法進入美國，至少在實施《通貨膨脹削減法案》帶來的巨大工業刺激措施期間如此。這也是為了保護國內製造商在美國汽車行業被認為正在迅速轉型的期間，不受來自售價可能便宜一半或吸引力翻倍的汽車的競爭。（照白宮的說法，到2030年時，美國市場上銷售的新汽車中預計將有一半是電動汽車，遠高於去年的7.6%。）

Biden wagered an awful lot of first-term political capital on a new green industrial policy, which allocated more than $2 trillion in spending on the climate-focused I.R.A. and the climate-inflected infrastructure law and CHIPS Act. Now, toward the end of his term, he is trying to build a protective moat around America’s budding green industries. From the outside, it looks like a genuine climate trade war. Can it even be won?

拜登在第一個任期內將大量政治資本押在了新的綠色產業政策上，為以氣候問題為主的《通貨膨脹削減法案》、受氣候問題影響的基礎設施法和CHIPS法案安排了逾2萬億美元的支出。現在，在第一個任期即將結束時，他正在試圖為保護美國新興的綠色產業修建一條護城河。從外面看，這種做法看上去是一場涉及氣候問題的實實在在的貿易戰。能打贏這場戰爭嗎？

You have probably heard about the miraculous growth of green energy around the world in recent years — in 2023, renewables for the first time provided 30 percent of all global electricity, and last month, in another first, fossil fuels provided less than a quarter of European Union power.

你可能聽說過全球綠色能源近年來的奇蹟般增長，來自可再生能源的電力2023年首次達到了全球電力供應的30%，上個月，化石燃料為歐盟國家提供的電力也首次降到了25%以下。

But though the carbon reductions are most impressive in Europe, the green boom is overwhelmingly a Chinese story. More than half of all new solar power installed in the world last year was installed inside China. For wind power, the share was even larger: China was responsible for 60 percent of all new global capacity. In just three years, the country has more than doubled the total amount of solar and wind power installed within its borders; in the United States, what looks like a breakneck build-out over the same period has pushed capacity up by less than 50 percent. Batteries, too: Last year China manufactured storage capacity equal to total global demand.

儘管歐洲在碳減排上做得最引人注目，但綠色繁榮卻主要是個中國故事。去年全球新增太陽能發電量的一半以上安裝在中國境內。中國的風能發電能力在全球占的份額更大：全球新增風電產能中有60%在中國。在短短三年裡，中國境內的太陽能和風電裝機總容量增長了一倍多；美國在同一時期看似驚人的擴建只將產能提高了不到50%。電池也是如此：中國去年製造的電池存儲容量相當於全球的總需求。

When you move upstream from final products into the green-tech supply chain, China dominates even more. It produces 84 percent of the world’s solar modules, according to a recent report by BloombergNEF. It produces 89 percent of the world’s solar cells and 97 percent of its solar wafers and ingots, 86 percent each of its polysilicon and battery cells, 87 percent of its battery cathodes, 96 percent of its battery anodes, 91 percent of its battery electrodes and 85 percent of its battery separators. The list goes on.

如果從終端產品向下游追溯綠色技術供應鏈的話，中國的主導地位就更顯著了。據《彭博新能源財經》最近的一份報告，全球84%的太陽能組件由中國生產。中國生產世界上89%的光伏電池、97%的太陽能晶片和硅錠、86%的多晶矽和電池片、87%的電池陰極、96%的電池陽極、91%的電池電極，以及85%的電池隔膜。這樣的例子還很多。

It is in this context that the United States is undertaking its clean-tech trade war — not from a position of strength or even parity. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, it was in response to plans for an American satellite, which made it into orbit just three months after the Russian launch; later in the Cold War, when American hawks lamented the “missile gap,” they were referring to a fiction, because the Russians had no advantage. Today, China controls more than 80 percent of many essential aspects of the global clean-energy supply chain; the United States controls almost none of it.

正是在這種背景下，美國發動了清潔技術貿易戰，而美國目前既不處於實力地位，甚至也不處於勢均力敵的地位。蘇聯1957年發射人造地球衛星是對美國的衛星計劃作出回應，美國自己的衛星在俄羅斯發射三個月後進入了軌道；美國鷹派人士在冷戰後期哀嘆「導彈差距」時，他們指的是假想之物，因為俄羅斯人在導彈上並沒有優勢。如今，中國控制著全球清潔能源供應鏈許多重要環節的80%以上；美國幾乎不控制任何環節。

Does it matter? To hear Democratic policymakers from Biden and Janet Yellen on down tell it, the answer is yes. To navigate the green transition smoothly, they say, the country needs to avoid growing entirely dependent on China for clean energy in the way we previously relied so heavily on autocratic gulf states for dirty energy. They also want to avoid a replay of the “China shock” of the early 2000s, which decimated manufacturing labor across the industrial Midwest especially, and to combat the problem of “oversupply” from China on American businesses and workers. In a best-case scenario, subsidies and tariffs would together help American companies ramp up E.V. production so rapidly that U.S. manufacturers become a driving force behind the decarbonization of global transportation.

這有關係嗎？如果聽聽拜登和耶倫等民主黨派決策者們的說法，答案是肯定的。他們說，為了有效、平穩地應對經濟的綠色轉型，美國需要避免完全依賴中國獲得清潔能源，因為那就像以前嚴重依賴獨裁的海灣國家來提供骯髒能源那樣。他們還希望避免2000年代初的「中國衝擊」重演，那次衝擊摧毀了美國製造業的大部分就業崗位，尤其是中西部的工業地帶，他們要防止中國給美國企業和工人帶來的「供應過剩」問題。在最好的情況下，補貼和關稅會一起幫助美國公司快速提高電動汽車產量，讓美國製造商們成為推動全球運輸行業脫碳的力量。

But there are risks. To begin with, industrial policy isn’t guaranteed to work, and no tariff is large enough to really reduce China’s global green-tech dominance, because the U.S. market isn’t all that significant to the Chinese. Green self-sufficiency is more achievable, and tariff defenders suggest they are meant to be temporary, allowing the American E.V. industry merely to find its footing. But for how long should we baby domestic industry when it means higher prices on so much of the good green stuff? “A glut in renewables and green products is precisely what the climate doctor ordered,” Dani Rodrik of Harvard wrote this month. As Bloomberg’s David Fickling has pointed out, Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Chinese solar-panel exports in 2018 may have meaningfully slowed American renewable rollout. Will American E.V.s fare any better?

但也存在風險。首先，產業政策並不能保證會奏效，而且，不論多高的關稅，都不能真正削弱中國主導全球綠色技術的地位，因為對中國來說，美國市場並不那麼重要。綠色經濟的自給自足更容易實現，支持關稅的人說，關稅只是暫時的，是為了讓美國電動汽車工業能找到立足點。但在這樣做意味著如此之多的綠色好產品價格過高的時候，我們應該對國內的產業支持多久呢？「可再生能源和綠色產品供過於求正是解決氣候問題所需要的，」哈佛大學的丹尼·羅德里克本月寫道。正如彭博社的戴維·菲克林指出的那樣，川普2018年對中國的太陽能電池板出口徵收的關稅也許明顯地減緩了美國推廣可再生能源的努力。美國在電動汽車方面會做得更好嗎？

A few weeks ago, the electric-vehicle analyst Kevin Williams took a trip to Beijing to take the measure of the competition. Williams had gone to the city’s big annual automotive show to test one American perspective on China’s E.V. boom — that it was something between a state-sponsored boondoggle and a mirage of pointless overproduction.

幾週前，電動汽車行業的分析師凱文·威廉斯為了摸清競爭對手的底細訪問了北京。威廉斯參觀了一年一度的北京車展，以驗證一個美國對中國電動汽車行業繁榮的看法——這種看法曾介於那是國家支持的毫無意義的工作和無目標的過度生產幻象之間。

After test-driving a dozen vehicles, Williams thought he had his answer: Chinese E.V.s were simply better and more compelling than their European and American counterparts, he said. “Now that I’ve seen a glimpse of what’s going on in China,” he wrote, “the Western manufacturers, particularly the American ones, don’t seem like they’re trying at all.”

在試駕了十幾輛車後，威廉斯認為他找到了答案：中國的電動汽車就是比歐洲和美國的更好、更具吸引力，他說。「在我短暫體驗了中國正在發生的事情之後，我覺得西方製造商們，尤其是美國製造商們，看起來根本就沒有在努力，」他寫道。